


you have to see what she becomes

by thermodynamicActivity (chlorinetrifluoride)



Series: The Collegestuck 'Verse [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F, Gen, Humanstuck, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Period-Typical Sexism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-21 20:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13748889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chlorinetrifluoride/pseuds/thermodynamicActivity
Summary: Your name is Dolores Martineau, Dolores when you're in trouble, Dolo to your friends and family, Lola to people you really like. In 1970, you're fourteen and a high school freshman, the first black girl in a newly co-ed science and math school in downtown Brooklyn. But that's not all you want to be. When you finish high school and college, you want to be a civil engineer. Even if most women don't study engineering.And your aunt's "friend", the highly affluent, highly homosexual Cecily Clark, a college student and an aspiring scientist in her own right, is determined to see you do exactly that. Even as her own issues threaten to swallow her alive.





	1. i have no choice but to be the first

**Author's Note:**

> this is going to be an interesting story to write.  
> oh yeah, names, names, names for the human ancestors involved in this story.
> 
> Dolores "Lola" Martineau - The Dolorosa  
> Cecily Clark (later Perlman) - The Condesce (sort of)*
> 
> *there are two condesces in collegestuck, and they are related to each other (paternal half-sisters). the one (carolyn) who ends up in an abusive relationship with simon two and a half decades from this point in collegestuck is not the condesce character of this story. 
> 
> that distinction goes to cecily. cecily clark is by far the more responsible and level-headed of the two sisters, although she is oftentimes judgmental, abrasive, and selfish.
> 
> nevertheless, she cares about people, and she cares deeply about her causes.

_"In all my years of teaching, I have never seen a mind like the one your daughter has. You have to go. You have to see what she becomes." - Hidden Figures_  

* * *

  ** _September 1970 - Dolores Martineau_**

Your name is Lola Martineau, and you are so nervous about your first day of high school that you have to keep reminding yourself not to vomit on anyone or anything. Your first day also happens to coincide with your 14th birthday. You have never been this anxious on your birthday. 

Your father hands you a brand new slide rule, which must have set him back a bunch of money, and you can barely even thank him because your hands won’t stop shaking.

“I know you’ll do well,” he tells you in Kreyol.

You nod, and walk out the door to wait for your ride.

Although Cecily Clark and you don’t really get along that well, she promised your aunt - whom she’s rather inconspicuously in love with - that she would drop you off at your school so you wouldn’t die on the subway.

Cecily dresses almost exclusively in men’s shirts and trousers, and she went to Christopher Street Liberation Day.

You tried to explain to Tante that Cecily was just a huge lesbian trying to impress her, but your aunt, after blushing, figured that if you had been as rich as Cecily, and your father had been as disappointing as her father was, you’d probably be a lesbian too.

“Look at where you’re going to high school, Dolores,” Tante pointed out. “You’re not far off.”

Your family keeps worrying about you being in your high school's first co-ed class. If you were inclined toward women, which You Absolutely Are Not (You Swear), that would probably be the least of all evils in your aunt’s eyes. It’d be much more of a disgrace if you ended up with some White boy aspiring engineer.

* * *

Cecily pulls up, and gestures at the front seat of her car. Her new car. As in, not the car she drove from Park Slope to your house last week, when she came by to see your aunt.

_Is she serious?_

You climb into the front passenger seat, and hand the older girl a bag of breakfast that you made. Cassava and eggs. You may not care much for her, but you’re not one to be ungrateful.

“Exactly how many cars do you have?” you want to know.

“Not enough. If I had my way, I’d have one for every day of the week,” she says, pulling the car out of the space in front of your house. “Ready for school?”

You show her your new slide rule. It looks far less new in Cecily’s brand new car.

“Every engineer needs one of those,” she says, with a somewhat patronizing smile. “You know how to use it yet?”

Now, you’re not one to be ungrateful, but your mouth gets several steps ahead of your mind sometimes.

“What would you know about engineering?” you ask her.

She’s studying biochemistry at NYU. Still not engineering.

“Some of my best friends are engineers,” she replies coolly. “We had a _lot of them_ at _my school.”_

Her high school, all the way in the the Bronx. She graduated back in 1968, at the age of seventeen and two months, something she is rather fond of reminding anyone who will stand still enough to listen.

And yes, you might be one of the first women to set foot in that place on Fort Greene, but at least your school isn’t in the middle of nowhere. At least you know Brooklyn fairly well.

(In twenty-eight and a half years, she’ll be the youngest acting principal in the history of that school uptown, at least until they find a proper principal and demote her to Vice Principal, and Biology Department head. You’ll still be a guidance counselor, a position you’ll like just fine. And you two will continue arguing endlessly about whose alma mater was better.)

“My mistake,” you reply.

She digs a cigarette out of the box of Lucky Strikes on her dashboard - who in their right mind smokes those but older men who fought in WWII? - and puts it into her mouth in one fluid motion.

As an afterthought, she takes a second one out of the box and hands it to you.

Is she testing you? She’s caught you smoking your father’s cigarettes in front of the statue of General Grant often enough for her to know that you might have a bit of a problem.

“I won’t tell your aunt,” she promises. “You look like you could use one, though.”

She gives you her lighter, as she drives down the street.

“I’ve never smoked in a car before,” you say.

“It’s the same thing as smoking anywhere else,” she says. “Just don’t burn a hole in your seat.”

She makes a left turn onto Atlantic Avenue. She gives you five more cigarettes.

“That should get you to at least eighth period,” she says.

She is so going to tell your aunt.

And then Martine’s going to judge your life choices.

“What would I light them with?” you ask.

“Everyone there smokes,” she says. “Just ask one of those boys for a light. Come to think of it, luckies might be a little basic. They smoke grass there, you know.”

Like, grass as in marijuana? Really? 

“I had no idea you were so knowledgeable about grass.”

You should thank her for the cigarettes.

“Listen, Dolo,” Cecily starts out. “I know you don’t like me very much, but…”

“I like you just fine!” you exclaim.

“…which is just as well, since I’m not particularly fond of you either.”

“Oh.”

“I’m saying that because I have a phone number for you. It’s the number for the secretary in the Biology department of my school. If anyone at school gives you a hard time, particularly the faculty, call that number. Say you need to speak with me, that you’d like to leave a message, and tell the secretary who called. I’ll check with her after my classes.”

“If you don’t like me, why are you giving me that number?” you want to know.

“Women who are doing things they’re not supposed to do generally need other women to look out for them.”

“Are you suggesting I’m doing something I’m not supposed to do?” you ask, with a half-smile. 

“You know the answer to that,” Cecily replies. “So I’m proud of you. Class of 1974. Twenty girls in your class.”

“Seventeen,” you correct gently. “That is, if I get to graduation,”

You guess it’s alright to be nervous in front of Cecily.

If she were going to judge you, she would have done that already.

“Oh, you’ll get to graduation if it kills me, she says lightly,” but the expression on her face suggests that she is wholly serious.


	2. education and determination

_**September 1970 - Dolores Martineau** _

“Do what I did in high school and you’ll be just fine,” Cecily says, making an illegal left turn. “Keep your head in your books,  and stay away from boys you don’t know.”

“Which is all of them,” you remind her.

“Shouldn’t be hard, then.”

“What about girls I don’t know?”

“You should probably stay away from them too, unless you already know they swing your way.”

You stare at her like she’s grown a second head.

“Pardon, Cecily?”

If she’s suggesting you’re not straight, you just might get out of her car and walk the rest of the way to Tech.

“I’m telling you what I did,” she says. “Stop getting offended.”

“I was not offended! And for the record, unlike you, I do not  _live_  in sin.”

“Sure you don’t.”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Nothing. Seems like you’re the one insinuating here.”

Once you’re done arguing over Inclinations you Most Definitely Do Not Have, you let Cecily Clark’s instructions lull you into a state of relaxation. You got exactly half an hour of sleep last night. You didn’t drift off until well after midnight. Fabiola started crying at 1:30 and wouldn’t stop.

Then, she starts asking uncomfortable questions.

“Don’t get angry, but don’t show any outward sign of fear, even when you’re terrified. If they think you’re scared, they assume they’ve won. Don’t give them the satisfaction. You went to your freshman orientation, right?”

“I did.”

“How many black girls did you see in your graduating class?”

“Me,” you admit. “Maybe one or two others.”

You’re lying about the one or two others, but Cecily doesn’t have to know that. If she tells Tante Martine that you’re the only one out of seventeen girls, in a graduating class of almost nine hundred total, well, your aunt has a big mouth. She’ll let something slip to your father, who will lose his mind, march you all the way to Saint Joseph’s High, and demand they let you enroll late.

Cecily won’t quite call you on your lie, but she seems to detect that you’re not being truthful.

“If you’re the only one, don’t get yourself into any trouble. Because you’ll be the first one they look at.”

“I haven’t even gotten myself into any trouble.”

“Yet,” she says. She gives you her lighter. “And I’ve changed my mind. Don’t ask any of those white boys for a light. Don’t talk to them if you don’t have to.”

“What if I need to borrow a pencil?” you ask, as she pulls up in front of your school. It’s so big that it could swallow you up. You raise your slide rule. “What if I don’t quite know how to work this yet?”

“I’ll teach you. They had a million of them at Science, and I had one too. And few giant calculators, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.”

“Calculators?”

“I’ll show you what those are. They have some at NYU, too.”

“Am I allowed to talk to the young men of color?” you ask, pointing out a few black boys walking toward the main entrance.

“Let me think about that,” Cecily declares. She contemplates it for moment. “Better not risk it until October.”

“Am I allowed to talk to white girls?” you ask, then.

“Yes, but don’t talk too much. You can’t really trust them.”

“And you know this how, exactly?”

“Why don’t you try taking my word for it? I want to see you do well. If you can be first in your class, be first in your class. Be valedictorian. That’s the best way to show everyone what we can do.”

Cecily was fourth in her class. She still hasn’t entirely forgiven herself for only being fourth.

No way in hell will you be valedictorian, even if you tested well. Although you managed to do half the problems in Leandre’s old textbook, when you found out you’d be taking geometry, you’re still not entirely sure what geometry even is, besides confusing.

In homeroom, in room 703, you’re the only girl in your class of thirty students. You were sort of hoping that half the girls in your class would be female, that they’d group you together like that, but apparently not.

Your teacher hands you a new schedule, once she calls your name. You’re taking the classes you thought you were taking, save science and math.

You got a 97 on the Regents exam for Biology, so now you’re in Chemistry, which sort of makes sense.

But whoever figures out what classes you should be in has put you in… Trigonometry for math? You don’t even know what trigonometry is, beyond a theoretical level.

“Best of luck,” your teacher says. “Those are sophomore classes.”

You do your level best to keep your expression neutral, as you thank your teacher.

Maybe you’ll march yourself down to Saint Joseph’s office of enrollment tomorrow morning, and ask how registering late works.

That seems like an increasingly good idea, as everyone in your class continues to stare at you.

After homeroom, you have ten minutes until your first class. You walk out of school and over to a payphone, leaving a message with the secretary Cecily told you to call.

“There’s been a change of plans with my schedule,” goes your message. “I’m in two 10th grade courses. Is there any way you can pick me up when I get out at 3:30?”

* * *

 Your first class is the dreaded trigonometry, where you are the only girl on this entire floor. Your teacher asks you to repeat your name three times, checking his attendance sheet after each time, before he accepts that you’re in this class.

“Do you have the slightest idea what we do here?” he asks.

“Math?” you try.

“Oh, a girl with a smart mouth.”

(“Don’t show your fear, even when you’re terrified.”

You don’t see how you couldn’t.)

You decide to pull out some of that old Catholic school charm.

“Sir, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be learning here, but I’d like to learn it, if I can. And I’d be honored if you were the one to teach me.”

That answer seems to make him less angry.

“Right, then,” he says. “Take any seat, Miss Martineau.”

He butchers the pronunciation of your name. He’s supposed to be teaching you everything, and he couldn’t figure out how to pronounce it after you said it a few times? Although all your instincts are screaming at you to find a nice, unobtrusive seat in the back, you take the desk front and center.

If you’re going to learn, you might as well _learn._

* * *

French is easy. You come from a prominent Haitian family. You’re fluent in French.

English is less easy. You’re an  _engineer,_ not a writer.

Research is even less easy, but it’s mandatory, so you’re stuck with it.

History seems like it should be easy. You’ll make it easy.

Lunch should be easy, but it isn’t. You go outside for that period, 7th period, and chain smoke about three of the cigarettes Cecily gave you. 

One of the boys from your first class, with skin a shade darker than yours asks you for a lighter. You stare at him, with your eyes as wide as saucers, and say absolutely nothing. 

He asks you again in Kreyol, and then, and  _only then_ do you hand it over to him.

“Thanks,” he says, still in Kreyol. “Say, you don’t talk much.”

You do. Just not to boys. But you have a question.

“How did you know I was Haitian?” you ask. He shrugs, and gives you a little grin.

“You were cursing under your breath at Mr. Garcia in Kreyol this morning,” he says. “After class.”

“He deserved it,” you say defensively.

“I’m not arguing there.” Julien’s still smiling. He gives you back your lighter. “Say, you got a name?”

“Dolores.”

“Well,” he says, extending his hand for you to shake. “I’m Julien. Julien Renaud. Have a good afternoon, Dolores.”

And then he walks back inside.

You decide not to tell Cecily you broke the rules.

Chemistry is interesting. Your teacher is female, which shocks you. She’s female, but she’s positively ruthless. You decide that she’d have to be.

After you get out of school, you figure you’re going to have to take the subway home, until you get to Atlantic Avenue, where you see Cecily’s empty car. You walk into the drugstore she’s parked in front of, where she’s haggling down the price of another pack of luckies with the man at the counter.

When she sees you, she nods approvingly.

“So you got my message, then?” she asks.

“What message?”

“I left a message with the front desk of your school a few hours ago. I’ll be picking you up from school until the 20th.”

“Why?”

“You seem like you need some help.”

You don’t want to be Cecily - or anyone’s - charity case. Emboldened from surviving your first day of school, you tell her exactly that.

“I don’t do charity,” she says.

She comes from one of the best families in the city, black, white, or otherwise. All of them do charity to assuage their guilt at being masters of the universe.

“Your family would beg to differ.”

“I’m not my family, now am I?” she replies. She gives you 7 more cigarettes, and opens the door of her car. “Now get in, before I change my mind.”

“Yes, Cecily.”

She talks to herself for a good part of the drive back to your house.

“So they figured they’d get the jump on you and put you in sophomore classes to confuse you?” she asks. “Well, that’s not going to happen. You’re going to be first in your class.”

“Cecily, I don’t know the first ten elements on the periodic table. Someone in chem knew fifty. And in trig, we’ll be learning about logarithms. I don’t know how to spell that.”

“You’ll know _the whole damn thing_ , from one all the way to a hundred and five, by the time I’m finished with you. As for math, well, you get your log or trig tables tables yet?”

_“Log tables? Trig tables?”_

“I’ll get you copies. In fact, I’ll get you copies tonight, and give them to you tomorrow morning. Show it to your bastard of a math teacher.”

“Should I try to memorize _everything_ on it?”

“You won’t be able to. Not unless you’re exceptionally brilliant.”

You cross your arms.

“What makes you think I’m not?”

Instead of taking offense, Cecily starts to laugh.

“Good answer. Ask your homeroom teacher what college classes you can take next year, next time you see them.”

You blink at her.

“Isn’t college a long way off?”

“You’re in 9th grade. When I was in 9th grade, I already knew what college I wanted to go to.”

You sigh.

She wins.

“I wonder if it’s too late for me to enroll at St Joseph’s,” you muse aloud.

Cecily glares at you.

“First day and you want to give up, Dolores? You don’t seem like the type to give up easily.”

“If I don’t enroll soon, it’ll be too late. And you’re right. I’m not exceptionally brilliant.”

“No one starts out being exceptionally brilliant,” she says. “But you want to be somewhere that it’s an option.”

You sigh again.

“If you hate this school so much, transfer to another school like it. There’s one in downtown Manhattan, not far from NYU. You could probably get in. It’s been accepting girls a year longer. I think they have around ninety girls there, now. Maybe that wouldn’t seem as hard.”

Who hasn’t heard of that school on Chambers Street in this day and age? Cecily would have gone, if she could.

“Now I know you’re messing with me. I’m not smart enough for that.”

“What about my high school?” she asks, voice full of pride. “That went co-ed in the forties. Girls and boys, there’s practically an even number of them, there. You grab the 4 at Eastern Parkway, and you ride it until the third to last stop.”

“Only one train?” you ask.

“Only one train,” she repeats. “You'd have to take another admission test, though. And you have to register to do that before the third week of September.”

“I could do that,” you figure.

She nods. “I’ll make sure they look out for you at that school. Assuming you don’t want to stay where you are.”

“I’d like to get as far away from where I am, as fast as I can.”

Cecily looks you over.

“Don’t give up yet, Dolores. _They_ count on us giving up.”

“Who is _‘they’,_ exactly?”

“If you don’t know who ‘they’ are by now, I can’t help you."

She lights another cigarette.

She continues, “They’re all around you. From your math teacher down to your father. They look at you, and they think they write the script of what you can do. You owe it to yourself to not only correct the script, but to write your fucking book. If I could do it, you can do it.”

“I don’t want to let anyone control me,” you say. Once again, an approving nod from Cecily. “Including you. I don’t want you to try to convince me I can do something I can’t. I’m not strong.”

“You’re stronger than you think you are,” Cecily says. “If you could convince your father to send you to this school, you can probably do anything you put your mind to doing. Also, if you give up, Martine will never let me hear the end of it.”

Your aunt was forced to drop out of school when she was fifteen, which wasn’t all that long ago. You think it’s been around ten years? Twelve? No more than that, you think.

“Tante is trying to live vicariously through me. Especially since my mother’s too crazy to tell her what an idiot she is.”

Your father took your mother all the way to Queens Village in June, to a place called Creedmoor Hospital, which specializes in treating people who have depression as bad as hers.

When you last saw her in August, she seemed exactly the same. Even more catatonic, if such a thing were possible.

So you have the sneaking suspicion that your mother is going to be the way she is for a few more years yet.

“Can you blame Martine for wanting to?”

And you can’t. Not now. Not anymore.

She was going to finish up her high school credits, if not for the fact that you needed her to watch Sebastien, Jean, and Fabiola, so you could go to high school.

You don’t only owe your success to yourself. You owe it to her.

“Alright, Cecily. Say you’re right. You’re going to be tutoring me for a long time. Are you sure you want to do that in your junior year? Don’t you have your own studying to do?”

“Even if it takes me an extra year to finish, which it probably won’t–” It probably won’t, Cecily is the smartest person you know. “–I can afford that. I started early.”

“I know,” you say, like you haven’t heard that a thousand times.

* * *

**_September 1970 to January 1971_ **

Cecily more than makes good on her promise to tutor you, lest your aunt never forgive her. She’s a tutor, a guidance counselor, and a… fucking drill sergeant all in one. Leandre’s stories of basic training seem far less arduous than learning from Cecily.

She is a good teacher, when she puts her mind to it.

You suggest to her that perhaps her forte doesn’t lie in biochemistry research, but in teaching. She looks at you as if you’ve grown a second head.

“I’m helping you figure out your destiny, right, Dolo? Trust me when I say I can figure out mine. I have a nice place in the undergraduate lab, and credits in two publications,” she replies. “So stop stalling for time. What are the roots for that equation?”

“The roots?”

“Do I have to walk you through it?”

“Well, I look at my graph. And there are three roots, because this is a cubic function, right?”

“You should know by now if you’re right or not.”

You write out the solution set.

{-4, -1, and 2.}

At least they’re all integers this time around.

“Don’t forget to show all your work, otherwise you won’t get full credit,” she says. “While you’re at it, what does a sine function look like? And a tangent function?”

“Sine looks like a wave. Tan looks like…” You gesture in the air with your pencil.

“Graph them.”

Tangent’s so confusing that you actually do that correctly. Cecily seems satisfied. Then you fuck up and graph cosine instead of sine.

 _“Dolores!”_ she shouts, once she notices your mistake.

“Sorry!” you say hastily. “I take back what I said. You should never be a teacher, Cece.”

“Glad we got that straightened out. And I apologize for yelling at you.”

* * *

**_January 1971_ **

Your final report card day for the semester is officially the best day ever, at least until you get your marks. You have a hundred in every class, except for history and chemistry, where you have a 99 and a 98 respectively.

That makes you tenth in your graduating class so far.

Cecily doesn’t even read you the riot act for being nine places behind where she expected you would be.

No, Tante yells at you about that, in French, no less.

She’s been speaking to you solely in French since the start of the school year, where your French I teacher beheld, four days in, that she had nothing to teach you. You took yet another test, and ended up in third-year French, with a bunch of taciturn juniors who looked angry about having to even take foreign language. 

“Ten, Dolores?” she exclaims. “You and Cecily said you’d be first! When I was still in secondary school, I was second!”

Second out of like, maybe forty or so. Classes in the old country were small, and she only dropped out when she came here.

“Can I talk to you, Martine? S’il vous plait?” Cecily asks, in nervous French, the only class she could really not help you in. You have no idea why not. Her mother’s family is half from Guyana, half from a city called Aix-en-Provence (in France), and her father’s family is from New Orleans, yet she’s not great at the language. She can follow it well, and while she can carry on an extended conversation, every now and then, she’ll forget the right word.

She knows all the science-related words, even teaching you a few, but sometimes she can’t remember the simplest thing.

“Yes?” Martine asks, in heavily-accented English. You think it’s an olive branch. She’s not that much more proficient in English than Cecily is in French.

“She’s in two sophomore courses, and a junior one. Very few first-year high students take classes like that,” Cecily points out, once more in French. “And she’s ten in a class of… how many people, Dolores?”

“Nine-hundred fifty-seven,” you answer.

“That puts her nearly at the top percent of her class,” Cecily continues. “How many people were in your class, Martine?”

“Three classes. Fifty-one, total,” your aunt says, sounding annoyed now.

“I can do better now that I know what I’m doing,” you comment. “I’ll get properly into the single-digits rank wise next semester. I can be first then, I promise.”

Your aunt is even more annoyed to hear you say this.

You think you realize why your aunt and Cecily get along so well, other certain… proclivities that they may have, which neither of them have ever spoken to you about. The two of them, much to their detriment, cannot stand to be corrected in the least.

“You can tell your father, then, since you know such a great deal. He’ll have something to say, he’ll be right, and I won’t defend you.” She looks even angrier at the idea of your father being right about anything. “You may have done better at St. Joseph’s. At least there, you’d learn the virtues. What do you know about the virtues, Dolores?”

You rattle off all seven, trained from years of Catholic school. You rattle off all seven in French, no less.

“You know but do not understand. Humility is a virtue,” your aunt says, with a sigh.

Now you’ve worked yourself down to the bone, only sleeping for four hours per twenty-four, just so you could get these marks, and make her proud. Not only is it not enough, but she’s saying this to you?

“Patience is also a virtue, Tante,” you reply.

Cecily steps in before you can get shouted at, and smooths things over with Martine. But your aunt’s initial order is absolute.

You must be the one to take news of your most disappointing failure to your father, and no, Cecily cannot come with you.

Your father, who stressed poor Leandre out about his marks even though he was valedictorian to Regis High, class of 1966. Then he got drafted during his gap year between high school and college and ended up dying in Vietnam.

You miss him. He’d know what to say to you. He’d be able to give you advice. He’d protect you from your father’s ire.

You don’t think your father will countenance “ten” much, whether you say the word in Kreyol, French, or English. You walk the half block from Martine’s apartment building to your parents’ house. Cecily promises that she’ll stay at Martine’s until you tell your father everything.

When you unlock the doors, he’s already sitting in his chair, drinking a cup of hibiscus tea. Your hibiscus tea. Which he professes to detest.

“Papa,” you say.

“Tout bagay anfom?” he asks, noticing that you have begun to shake.

“Everything’s fine,” you assure him. “I got my last report card for the term.”

“And?”

You switch back to Kreyol.

“I’m sorry to tell you, but I only got a hundred percent in some of my classes. Not History. And not Chemistry.”

“What did you get in those classes, my dear?”

“Ninety-eight in Chemistry, and 99 in History in both.”

He breaks into a broad smile.

“That’s excellent! Excellent! Wait until I tell my friends about my brilliant daughter!”

“I haven’t finished telling you everything, sir.”

“Oh?”

 _“Mwen regret sa,”_ you say, tears gathering in your eyes, tears that spill over when you say the next thing. “But I’m tenth in my class.”

“Only?”

“Only ten.”

“You’ll study with Cecily more, then,” he declares in English. “Do I give you many chores, Dolores?”

“No more than I can handle.”

“I must give you too many, for ten.”

“No, that was my own oversight. I did not study hard enough for my tests. I swear I’ll do better next term.”

“Good, good,” he says. So, you’ve been downgraded from excellent to good. “With that sort of diligence, you’ll be first before long, won’t you, Dolores?”

“I will.”

“Good, Dolores. You’re smart, for a girl. You know that?”

You accept his backhanded compliment with grace, a bold refutation only an inch away from your lips. Cecily would have definitely had a smartass comment for that. But she’s not here. 

However, she has a rant of her own, pacing the confines of her apartment, when you two return for “tutoring”, but more accurately to talk shit.

You’re not smart for a girl, Cecily reminds you. You’re smart in general. Brilliant, more like. And if she has a hand in it, you’ll be even more brilliant.

If you’re determined not to rest until you are first, neither will she.

(In more than thirty years, you’ll tell one of your freshmen, also black, also from Bed-Stuy, that three out of six-hundred ninety is perfectly respectable.

Porrim will stare at you incredulously the whole time.

She’ll push herself for the entire next semester, until she’s second. And she won’t be satisfied, then. Her parents won’t be satisfied either.

She’ll do what you yourself will fail to.

She’ll drink more coffee, and smoke more cigarettes. She won’t stop until she achieves what she is told she must achieve.

And she’ll take home the valedictorian’s medal, by nearly 0.3 points, a moment away from a nervous breakdown all the while.)

“You’re more than smart for a girl,” Cecily insists, in her own apartment, once you’re done telling her every word of what your father had to say. “You’re smart in general. Your family’s crazy. And I’m going to talk to that father of yours. He expects too much.”

“He expects  _enough_ ,” you say. Unlike Martine, you respect your father. You won’t have an outsider telling him what to do. “He expected the same thing of Leandre.”

“You’re so much greater than your brother’s shadow. Tell me, did Leandre ever have take care of the children?”

“Why should he have had to?”

“You have to.”

“He was boy. I’m not. And he never met Fabiola. She was born after he deployed.”

“Exactly. And he wasn’t one of the first girls at his school. That should count for something.”

“He was one of the first black boys at Regis,” you counter. “ _That_ should count for something, too.”

Cecily sighs.

“I’m not trying to start a fight with you, but you’ll lose your mind if you hold yourself to all these standards,” she says gently. “I wasn’t first in my class. And my parents never expected me to care for Carolyn. Yet, they accept what I have achieved.”

“Just as well, since you’re awful at caring for children,” you say half-mocking.

Carolyn, her sister, was born a few months before she graduated from high school. Cecily maintains that her sister is a brat of a child who hates her. You have never known two year olds to hate.”

“That’s also true,” she agrees. “And yet, my parents are proud of me. Why can’t your family be proud of you?”

“We were not all born with silver spoons in our mouths,” you fire back. “My father knows what  _work_  is.”

She doesn’t rise to the taunt. She’s too dignified for that. She keeps at her initial argument.

“Yes, yes, your father who comes home from work, and sits in his chair. Meanwhile, his daughter goes to school for seven hours a day, comes home, and takes care of his children with one hand, while she balances equations with the other. Even Martine, who busies herself with children while you’re at school, and hands them over you as soon as she can. Tell me, how come they only have to write with one hand, when they’re older, and you have to be ambidextrous?”

“It’s just the way things are, Cecily!”

“Things shouldn’t always be the way they are!” She explodes. “You think I didn’t want to go to Stuyvesant? I spent four years telling myself I had to be at my school because of the way things are. Because they didn’t take girls until 1969. Fuck the way things are!”

“Easy for you to say!”

“It’s not easy for me to say. It’s  _exactly_  why I want to talk to your father!”

You do your best to not start crying again.

“You really want to talk to him?” you ask.

“I do.”

“What would you even tell him?”

“I’d say, that as your tutor, who has nothing but your best interests at heart, that if he wants you to be valedictorian so badly, why doesn’t he give you the chance?”

“What do you mean? He let me go to this school. I have the chance!”

“As long as you have to learn to write with both hands, you don’t,” she says. “I talked this over with Martine earlier. She’s willing to have Sebastien, Fabiola, and the other one–”

“Jean-Claude,” you say.

“Yeah. Him. Your aunt’s willing to have them on a more full-time basis, if it means you gain the edge in your studies.”

“She’s not,” you murmur. “She hates children. No way.”

“Didn’t she intercede on your behalf when you were trying to convince your father to even let you attend Tech?” Cecily presses. “Some of her stubbornness aside, she very badly wants to see you succeed. She wants to prove Antoine wrong.”

“As always.”

“As always,” Cecily agrees. “She’ll come with me when I talk to him. And if we can’t convince him, I don’t think anyone can.”

That’s for damn sure.

“So,” you say, ready to devise a new plan of action now. “To become first, what do I need to do?”

“Everything,” Cecily maintains. “Not only do you have to do everything, but you have to do it better than a thousand other people. What classes are you taking next year?”

“More research. Honors Precalculus, honors English, and honors Physics. And two college level classes.”

“Really, now?”

“French and World History.”

“I won’t lie to you, Dolores. When I was in high school, I didn’t take a lot of that until junior year. This is going to be harder than anything you or I have ever done.”

“Do you think we can do it?”

“It’s on you to do most of the work. I think you can do it, but you need to be prepared to study for like eleven hours a day.”

“If Martine has the children, seven hours of school and eleven hours of studying leaves me six hours to sleep. That’s two more than usual,” you say, with a hint of sarcasm.

“Also, you can definitely use all the help you can get, if this is really what you want,” Cecily continues, as if she hasn’t heard you. “Don’t be afraid to lean on those friends of yours.”

Your friends, whose existence she has come to accept. Julien Renaud, who is like her. Homosexual. And Xavier Yamada, who, like Cecily, seems to look mildly displeased at all times.

You’re the only person in their group who wears a skirt, those Black and Asian boys from your Chemistry, French, and Trig classes. Since they’re not freshmen, you don’t pose a particular threat to them.

It’s a far cry from Cecily’s old “stay away from boys” warning, but you’re going to need more than that, now.

“I understand,” you tell her.

“When’s your first day of school?”

“In two days.”

“Be ready, then.”

Oh, you’ll be ready. You’ll be the most ready. You’ll get straight hundreds from here on out. To be honest, you don’t know if you want to be valedictorian. However, if first is what your father and Tante want, in order to absolve you of caring for your siblings, you’ll do that and hang upside down the entire time.

Cecily’s plan to ambush your father goes without a hitch the next day. Tante hounds him in Kreyol until he acquiesces to their demands..

“Your studies, then, Dolo. Focus on your studies,” your father says, turning to you. “Why aren’t you studying?”

“There’s no school until Monday,” you say.

“And that means you can be complacent?”

You want badly to roll your eyes at him and inform him that you haven’t learned anything new since before midterm reviews, was a few weeks ago. Exactly what are you supposed to be studying at the moment?

For lack of anything else to do, you go upstairs to the room you share with your siblings, and sing the first forty elements, from memory, in French to the tune of a song you’re making up on the spot. It’s gentle, devoid of dissonance enough, that it soothes them. While you don’t need to know the whole periodic table in any language for the Chemistry Regents, and you don’t need to know the elements for the French Regents, it keeps you busy.

Jean-Claude half-awakens and hurls his rattle at your face. He hits the bullseye. You groan, and stop singing.


	3. memorization and socialization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dolores and her awful friends

_**February 1971 - Dolores Martineau** _

You tell your friends about your aspirations as the three of you stand on the corner of Fort Greene Place, chain smoking cigarettes before math. They’re both sophomores, so they know more than you do about this whole thing.

“Valedictorian, Dolo? Are you serious?” Julien asks you, in Kreyol, trying badly not to laugh. He switches to English. “I know you’re ambitious, but this is a bit ridiculous.”

Your other friend, Xavier, smokes his cigarette thoughtfully. Julien looks at him to back him up, but he won’t be sucked into any argument so easily.

“What’s so ridiculous about it?” you want to know.

“Well, what’s your rank at the moment?” Julien asks. “Are you even in the top ten?”

“I’m tenth” you say.

“Exactly. Not only will you have to defend your position, but you’re going to have to fight your way up. And the classes only get harder from here.”

“I think she can do it. Or at least do better than ten,” Xavier says. “If she can get to maybe sixth by the end of this school year, she has a decent chance. Dolores, are you taking any honors or college level courses next year?”

“All my courses are going to be honors or college level, next year,” you say to them.

“They weigh those classes differently,” Xavier informs you. “If you get hundreds in them, you’ll compensate for your freshman year grades.”

“Well, yes, but Xavier, you are somewhat biased,” Julien retorts.

It’s no secret that Xavier has a crush on you.

Julien could not be equally uninterested in you if he tried. He’s pretty good about keeping his inclinations a secret, but you know, and Xavier knows. 

“So,” Xavier starts out. “Are you two coming over after school?”

“I suppose,” you reply.

You remember the record in your bag. Your father would have a heart attack if you listened to such music in his house, being that he is Catholic.

“Where else are we going to go?” Julien asks.

Xavier’s parents are always working, and he’s an only child, so his house is usually empty. You and Julien go there to listen to records, and in Julien and Xavier’s case, to smoke more grass than anyone in their right mind should be able to smoke.

You took a few drags off a joint once. Exactly once.

It made you so paranoid that you could barely go home two hours later. You don’t think there will be a second time.

However, Xavier also has wine, and you are rather fond of wine. It makes taking care of your siblings bearable, even though your father has all but absolved you of that particular responsibility.

The only problem is that you smoke even more when you drink, and a pack Parliament cigarettes is almost 60 cents.

You receive a dollar-fifty for lunch and transportation from Tante every other day, usually after she laments that a dollar-fifty doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to. You get an extra 50 cents whenever Cecily feels sorry for you, which is about four times a week.

Although you are theoretically allowed to ride the subway for free, as a student, you don’t often. Unless you feel like arguing with the person in the booth.

Taking the subway costs 60 cents a day, assuming you don’t take any detours to the library, Prospect Park, or elsewhere. According to Julien, whose father works in transit, the fare is going up to 35 cents next year.

Either way, if you don’t budget your money carefully, you cannot afford cigarettes. It doesn’t help that Xavier and Julien bum smokes off you whenever they can.

Xavier lowers his voice.

“Here’s the plan, then. We meet up at Tom’s at around 4, we get something to eat, and then we head back to my house.”

You don’t have enough to buy anything from Tom’s but a Shirley Temple.

However, Julien has a part time job, and Xavier’s independently wealthy. He has around twenty-five dollars in change socked away in the top drawer of his dresser.

Generally, they buy up half the menu, take it back to Xavier’s place on Vanderbilt Avenue, smoke a few joints, get the munchies, and devour everything in sight. Julien has a wiry sort of grace, and Xavier is just plain skinny, so you have no clue where they put all that food.

“Why don’t we meet at Tom’s at 3:30? None of us have ninth period classes,” Julien says.

“I have orchestra,” you chime in. “Remember?”

“None of us have ninth period classes,” Julien repeats. “Orchestra isn’t a class. Can’t you ditch it?”

“Oh, sure, I can ditch it. If I want my grade to drop. How am I going to be valedictorian if I skip school?”

“You’re probably not going to be valedictorian no matter what you do,” Julien says, blunt as a brick wall.

Xavier sighs, and puts himself between you and the other boy before you can smack anyone, and before Julien can dig himself into a deeper hole.

“Julien and I will meet up at 3:30. Dolores, just head straight to my house when you get out of class.”

The first bell goes off.

You smooth out your skirt and daintily crush the butt your cigarette under the heel of your shoe. Xavier throws his into a storm drain. Julien stubs his out against the building. Both of you stare at him and roll your eyes.

“Careful that you don’t get detention,” Xavier says.

“I already have detention,” Julien replies. “Ten of them from last semester.”

“You can’t be serious.”

You decide to rescue Julien, although he’s a bit of an ass, and probably did something to deserve all ten of those detentions.

“Let’s get to class before Garcia figures out a way to fail us,” you say.

“It’s the first day of the semester,” Julien points out. “He couldn’t, even if he wanted to.”

“When’s that ever stopped him?”

You don’t think Mr. Garcia sleeps at night as long as several of his students aren’t in danger of failing. You aren’t one of them, and you don’t plan to be one of them. However, if you’re going to be first, you need to maintain your grade in his class.

You remember the suggestion Cecily made a few days ago, that you be unafraid to depend on your friends more. She calls them idiots on a regular basis, but they’re both in the top ten of the sophomore class, so she respects their intelligence. That’s everything about them that she respects. She’s grudgingly amused by Julien, every now and then, mostly because he is so flamboyant around her.

“Eskize mwen, Julien?” you ask, a few minutes later, as you climb the seventh floor staircase.

He looks up at you.

“Wi?”

You ask him if he can tutor you in Chemistry, for the Regents Exam. He asks you what you have in the class, and you tell him.

“I’m trailing you by a point, then, Dolo,” Julien says, in English. “You have a 99. That’s way more than you should have as a freshman.”

“You know more than I do, though,” you reply. “I’m memorizing a lot of this. I’m not sure if I really understand it. But I know you understand it.”

He thinks for a while, and ultimately nods.

“Let’s do it then. I charge a cigarette an hour for my tutoring services.”

“You owe me almost an entire pack of cigarettes,” you remind him.

“You get the first seventeen hours for free, then,” he replies. “Good enough?”

“Good enough.”

* * *

By the time you get to Xavier’s, your flute stashed in its case in your bag once more, your friends are already pleasantly stoned, and are listening to a record with the volume cranked up so loud that you could hear the forty-year guitar solo from outside the house.

“You’re gonna get your parents evicted,” you say to him.

He turns down the music.

“You can’t turn down Jimi Hendrix!” Julien protests. “Have some respect!”

“Man, fuck Jimi Hendrix!” Xavier shouts, a downright blasphemous proclamation.

“I can’t fuck him!” Julien shouts right back. “The man is dead!”

You can’t help yourself. You burst out laughing until you can hardly breathe.

You remember when Hendrix died, about three weeks into your freshman year. It was all Julien would talk about before math. Then, Xavier suggested that he jam a sock in it.

You decided then and there that you could trust that duo, and for whatever reason, they decided they could trust you. You only somewhat regret your lapse in judgment.

“I have a record in my bag. Rolling Stones,” you tell your friends. “Would you like to listen to it?”

“Long as it’s not Hendrix, I’ll listen to anything,” Xavier says.

Julien smacks him with his English notebook.

Xavier says that if he does it again, he’s getting kicked out. You tell them both to calm down, and hand them the bag of breakfast you bought to school and forgot to eat.

“Cassava again?” Xavier wants to know.

“Cassava, eggs, and onions,” you say. “Although if you’re too good for cassava, you can just give it to Julien.”

“Cassava’s fine,” Xavier says, either because he’s trying not to offend you, or because he’s determined not to feed his best friend any more than he already does.

After you put the record into player, and listen to the first few bars of Gimme Shelter, Xavier hands you a mostly full bottle of Zinfandel.

“I have a gift for you, my dear,” he says.

You take several swigs from the bottle. Once the alcohol hits you and softens the edges around everything, you grin.

“I accept your gift, good sir.” you say, kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Xavier looks incredibly pleased with himself.

Julien rolls his eyes.

An hour, five cigarettes, and most of a bottle of wine later, the phone in the kitchen starts to ring. You have the music up loud enough that you need to turn it down to even properly hear the ringing. Xavier puts out his joint and gestures at you to turn the music down all the way before he answers it.

“Otou-san?” he asks.

He listens to the response, raises an eyebrow, and beckons you over.

“It’s for you, Dolores. It’s your sister.”

Explaining to him exactly what Cecily is to you would have been more difficult than lying. Julien knows the full story, since he’s not really in any position to judge Cecily or your aunt for their choices. You grab the receiver from Xavier.

“Hello?”

“Oh, good,” Cecily says. “I checked the library, and you weren’t around, so I figured you might be with the idiots. You have to come home, Dolo. Soon as you can, alright?”

You have a lot of wine in your system, so you’re halfway through protesting the indignity of being made to go home early on the first day of school, when Cecily cuts right through your chatter.

“Your father’s in Methodist Hospital,” she says darkly.

“Hold on, what?” you ask.

“When he got out of work, he was having chest pain. So Martine drove him to the hospital.”

Your aunt drives like a fool. You’re surprised she made it all the way to Methodist.

“Is he going to be alright?”

“Probably. They gave him some aspirin, and they gave Martine a Valium, and he’ll probably get discharged later. But you need to come home.”

You sigh. You drink the last of your wine.

You’re fucked no matter how you look at it, so you may as well be tipsy for the whole thing.

“Alright, Cecily. I’m leaving now.”


	4. women's work and women's feelings

_**February 1971 - Dolores Martineau** _

You phone Xavier’s house once you’ve been brought up to speed on your father’s condition, to assure Xavier and Julien that everything will be fine. Well, as fine as it can be. Your father is in danger of having a heart attack if he doesn’t stop smoking and if he doesn’t take some time off work. He’s a machinist out of a factory on Dean Street, and you don’t think he’s taken a sick day since before Leandre died, in fact, long before Leandre died.

“I _told_ you that you were overworking yourself, Antoine,” Martine says to your father, as she helps him over to his chair in the living room. “But it’s not the end of the world. You just need a rest.”

Your father shakes his head. “I can’t afford to take time off. We need money.”

Tante’s having none of that, though.

“You have a union job. They owe you paid sick leave. Take it,” she snaps. “If you die on the job, you _really_ won’t be bringing any money in, will you?”

“No, Martine,” he replies. He gestures over at you. “Put on the coffee, Lola, would you?”

“Yes, Papa.”

While they argue the financial situation of the family back and forth, you wonder if now is the right time to drop the bomb you had been planning to drop at some point. During the break between your first and second semester of high school, Julien had taken you by Swedish Hospital, mostly so he could hang around another one of his friends, a girl who had gone to Catholic school with him, Sonia Yoon.

Sonia was an assistant to the main switchboard operator, and a typist. More than that, since she was getting ready to finish high school, and had another job lined up in Queens, for when she started college there, she had been hinting that she was looking for someone to take her place in the switchboard office.

Julien had no such desire. 

But, he pushed you forward, and made the introductions. 

You were always short pocket money, so perhaps you did. And, Julien added to her, you even had your working papers. You’d gotten them the second you turned fourteen.

“Do you have any idea how a switchboard works?” she asked. 

You nodded. When you were still attending St. Peter Claver, while Leandre was still attending Regis, you two would often stop by the shop where your father worked. And while your father showed Leandre how the machinery worked - though you were far more interested in learning such things than your brother - he told you to stay in the switchboard office with the women.

So you learned what you could through observation. It got to a point where if one of the women was on break, she’d have you sit in her seat and puzzle your way through things, and most of the time, you did a decent job.

You told Sonia exactly this. She smiled.

“And your typing speed?” she asked.

Well, the class you thought would be teaching you research methods turned out to be more of a glorified typing class for the girls in attendance. You liked to think your speed was reasonable. You let her know how many words per minute you could type accurately. Sonia nodded.

“You want this job?” she asked.

This was a while before you knew your father would nearly have a heart attack, and have to take time off his own job, but you knew your answer even then.

“If it is at all possible,” you replied. “I will do whatever it is that you and your supervisors tell me to do.”

“Ask your parents, and let me know,” she says. “It won’t pay much. You’re not out of high school. You’re not even an upperclassmen, yet.”

“I know.”

Here and now, you put on a cup of coffee for your father.

Once it’s ready, you walk back into the living room, where he and Tante continue to debate.

“Eskize mwen?” you ask. “If I may interject?”

The both of them turn to stare at you.

“Oui?” your aunt asks.

“There’s a job opening up at Swedish Hospital, you know, over on Dean and Bedford,” you say. “They’re looking for a girl who can work the switchboards, and who can type. A girl who works there said she could probably get me the job, so perhaps I--”

Tante shakes her head. “ _Absolutely not!_ Do you even know the _sort_ of people who end up at that hospital?”

You have no idea if this is a rhetorical question, so you elect to answer it.

“A lot of alcoholics, for the most part,” you say. “But I wouldn’t have direct contact with any patients. Besides, if Papa’s taking time off, he won’t be able to take overtime shifts to compensate for times when we’re short. He’ll only be getting his base salary. So we need the money, and I’d only be working part time.”

“Your studies--” Tante starts out.

“It’s part time, Tante, just like your job,” you stress. “And then I’ll be able to contribute to the household, so Papa can focus on resting.”

Antoine heaves a heavy sigh, taking a sip of coffee.

“Will you be able to balance this with school?” he asks. “And still make top marks?”

You think you will. You decide to voice your next set of thoughts aloud.

“There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” you ask.

Your father nods, and says he supposes there is, the gray in his hair seeming particularly pronounced tonight. 

“Talk it over with Miss Clark, my Lola. If she thinks it’s a good idea, you have my permission.”

Cecily is about as excited about this as you expected her to be, the two of you drinking sodas in her parlor. She shakes her head, disgusted.

“You need to study, they’d be paying you a pittance, Dolo, and you know it,” she says. “Women’s work.”

You expected this argument.

“Women’s work is _still_ work, Cecily. And my family needs the money.”

Rather than arguing with you further, Cecily gets up, crosses the parlor, and takes her pocketbook off the hook it usually hangs on. From it, she removes her checkbook.

“How much money does your family need until Antoine can go back to work?” she asks.

You sigh. 

She’s missing the point. You don’t want to take her charity. Neither, you think darkly, will Martine.

“Martine won’t take your money,” you assure her. Of that, you are nearly certain. “You know I'm right.”

In a soft, almost hurt tone of voice, Cecily murmurs something like, “I wish she’d just let me take care of her. I _could_ take care of her. Better than any job. Better than any man.”

You really do not wish to open that can of worms. While you were on break, Cecily wined and dined your aunt, but when Cecily suggested they take the train to an establishment that catered to women like them, she put her foot down and refused.

Martine is perfectly happy to have Cecily pay for her dinner, to pull out her chair, to hold the door for her, to come back to her apartment for “refreshments” of a sort, but suggest that she might be anything than a good virtuous Haitian Catholic, be a woman and try to have an actual relationship with her, and well…

It won’t end well. 

Cecily pretends badly not to be upset by it.

You have no idea why your aunt is like this. Her “inclinations” are the worst kept secret in the universe. It’s not like everyone within a two block radius of your house doesn’t know how she is, doesn’t know _what_ she is. 

You put your hand on Cecily’s.

“Tell my father that I should take the job,” you say. “If it’s too much for me, balancing work and school, _then_ approach Martine about money and she'll probably have no choice. But I’d like to have my own money. And I’d like to be useful to my family.”

Ultimately, Cecily agrees. 

She’s on the phone to your father within the hour. 

And as soon as she’s done speaking with him, you ask her if you can use her phone. You have your own call to make. You take a neatly folded square of paper out of your pocket, one with Sonia Yoon’s phone number written upon it, and dial it.   


Then, you wait for someone to pick up. 

“Hello?” a male voice asks. You’re not sure who that is.

“Good evening,” you say. “I hope I am not interrupting anything. I’m a friend of Sonia’s, from school. I was wondering if I could speak with her.”

“Hold on,” the man replies.

He yells for Sonia, who, after about half a minute, presumably takes the phone from him.

“Yes?” she asks. “Who’s calling, please?”

“It’s Dolores Martineau. Julien’s friend.”

A pause.

“I see,” she says. “How are you doing?”

“Fine. Just fine,” you reply. “Yourself?”

“About the same. Trying to get a little studying for math done. Is this just a social call, or…?”

You’re too anxious to mince words.

“You know how you said there might be a job at Swedish Hospital for me, if I could get my father’s permission?”

“I do.”

“Well, my father said yes,” you say. “Assuming the position is still open.”

You think you can hear her practically smile into the phone.

“It is, Dolores. When can you start?” she asks gently.

You smile right back, nodding at Cecily, who rolls her eyes.

“Whenever. I’m in school until four on the weekdays, but after that I’m free, and my weekends are empty.”

The pair of you organize logistics, set a date for you to come in to meet the supervisor, and other important matters. When you get off the phone, Cecily’s eyebrows are still raised.

“Don’t work too hard, Lola,” she warns. 

“I won’t. I promise.”

* * *

That weekend, you report to Swedish Hospital’s switchboard room to both meet Sonia’s supervisor, and to learn the lay of the land. Irene Davis, the clear leader of this whole operation, is a dark woman with a kind face, but one that looks like she will take no shit from you, or anyone else.

“You’ll mostly be typing up memos, which should be easy for you. Sonia says you are good at typing,” she says. “Dolores, you said your name was?”

“Yes,” you and Sonia chorus.

“Can you read shorthand, Dolores?” she asks.

You gaze up at Sonia before you answer. 

She nods at you encouragingly.

“Not really,” you confess. “But I can learn.”

“Dolores is a quick study,” Sonia tells her supervisor. “She’s at the top of her high school class.”

“What school is that?” Mrs. Davis wants to know. “Bishop McDonnell? Like Sonia?”

You shake your head.

“Brooklyn Tech. It’s downtown,” you reply.

Mrs. Davis nods, neither approving nor disapproving.

“Oh, I know about Tech. Your friend Julien goes there, right, Sonia?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sonia replies, loading some paper into the typewriter as she speaks.

“I had no idea that school took young women,” Mrs. Davis says.

“It just started last year. My sister goes there, too. Remember?”

Mrs. Davis smiles.

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot about Sandra.”

Sandra, right.

You _know of_ Seo-min Yoon, Sandra being her English name, more than you _actually know_ her. Still, she seems to be a lot like her sister. Smart. Quick. Polite. And pretty. Quite pretty. 

Pretty enough that the few times you’ve spoken to her, mostly to either borrow or lend pencils and pens, you’ve found yourself uncomfortably lost for words.

She’s in your Chemistry class, though not your Trig class.

“So, Dolores,” Mrs. Davis begins, by way of continuing the conversation. “That’s a college prep school, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

As long as you keep your answers short, perhaps you won’t seem as nervous as you feel. What are you doing here? You can’t even read shorthand. You're going to be awful. You're going to be useless.

“Excellent. Always good to see Black girls who want to go to college. Do you know what you want to study, yet?”

At that, you perk up. 

You look to Sonia for guidance again. She nods at you by way of suggesting that you answer truthfully.

“Engineering, ma’am. Civil engineering,” you reply.

“Hard field for a girl to break into,” Mrs. Davis says. “Best of luck to you, Dolores.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Davis.”

After a few more reassuring words, she hands you a stack of papers she needs typed up within the next hour. Not one to ease you into things, you guess.

“A lot of this of this is in shorthand,” she says. “Sonia can read what it says to you for now. Try not to make too many mistakes, got it?”

You nod, solemnly.

“I will do my best.”

“After that, I need seventy copies. One of the boys will come by and post them where they need to be posted. Can you use a mimeograph?”

That, you can do. You volunteer in your high school’s physical science department office, so you are fairly comfortable with how a mimeograph operates. You tell her so.

She smiles again.

“Good, Dolores. I’ll be over in the switchboard room. Let me know when you’re finished. There’s more you need to see before you clock out.”

Once she leaves, you let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Sonia gives you an empathetic look.

“Mrs. Davis seems to like you,” she says.

“Really?”

“As well as she can like anyone.” She picks up the papers. “Let’s get to work, then? After you’re done with everything, and after you make the copies, she’ll want to show you how to operate the switchboard.”

“Yes, Sonia,” you reply.

Sonia bumps shoulders with you.

“And don’t look so serious, Dolores. If Davis likes you, the worst is already over with,” she says with a grin.

* * *

_**February 1971 to May 1971** _

The next few months seem to fly by, if only because you spend pretty much all your waking hours either studying or working. 

Shorthand doesn’t come to you as simply as you would like, and you make more mistakes at the typewriter than you’d expect to, but Mrs. Davis pronounces your work satisfactory. 

She nearly falls over in shock when she discovers that you’re only fourteen.

“I guess you’d have to be, if you’re in the 9th grade.” Other than her initial shock, she’s unperturbed by this revelation. “Sonia was right, though.”

You’re not entirely clear as to what she was right about. 

“She was?”

“Yes. You do learn fast. Finish your work, and come back to my office.”

Mrs. Davis seems to have caught on with the fact that you’re much better with the switchboard than you are with the typewriter. Thank God for that. 

“Yes, ma’am.”

A not entirely unwelcome side effect of your job at Swedish Hospital is that you start seeing more of Sandra Yoon than you ordinarily would. When Sonia works there during the weekends, Sandra brings her lunch. 

After your first few weeks of work, she takes to bringing you lunch as well.

“You really need to eat more, Lola,” Sandra says one afternoon, leaning over your shoulder, her chin practically resting on it. “Or Dolores? Whichever you prefer.”

You do your best not to blush.

“Lola’s fine,” you half say and half stammer, in the presence of this attractive girl in a minidress. 

At least Cecily isn’t here. She’d be having a field day with how flustered you get whenever Sandra speaks more than two words to you. You’re also glad Sonia isn’t in the same room as you at the present moment. She’d be telling Sandra to leave you to your work, and maybe wonder as to why you’re so shy around her sister. You're starting to realize why, and it scares you.

Perhaps you should go to confession and tell the priest about your fears. Even if he couldn't help you, maybe he'd be able to absolve you?

You don't want to be sinful.

You don't want to be like Tante Martine and Cecily.

Still, you’d rather prefer it if Sonia stayed. 

For now, at least.

“Did you start the Chemistry homework yet?” Sandra asks, taking a seat in an empty chair not far away from you.

“I finished it yesterday night,” you say. “I’m not sure if it’s all correct, though. I’d need to spend more time on it.”

Sandra makes a small sound of agreement.

“Redox reactions aren’t easy,” she admits. “Maybe when you’re not working, the two of us could study together. I spend a lot of time at the library on Eastern Parkway.”

You turn to her and give her the widest smile you’ve had any reason to give in at least a month.

“I would like that very much, Sandra,” you reply, and you mean every single word.

After you load more paper into the typewriter, Sandra takes your hand for a few seconds, squeezes it, and lets it fall.

“As would I.”

When you tell Julien about this later, he has the world’s most smug grin in response. You’d stab him with your compass, but all he’d do is get even more smug. Being that this is your free period, the two of you are smoking on Atlantic Avenue, smoking and making a poor show of reviewing the law of cosines.

“Sandra certainly looked very nice in that outfit today, doesn’t she?” Julien asks.

Before you realize this is a trap of sorts, that Julien is about as attracted to her as he would be to a tree, you agree emphatically.

“Oh, definitely,” you say. “She always looks nice.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

You throw your cigarette butt away, and put your hands on your hips.

“And _what’s that supposed to mean_ , Julien?”

“Nothing, Lola,” he says hastily, in Kreyol. “Nothing at all.

For what it’s worth, Julien does not breathe a word about what he suspects about you. Or about what you might be starting to suspect about yourself. 

You two resume discussing the law of cosines, and worrying about the Regents Examination, only seven weeks away now.

You’ll get a hundred on all your Regents Exams if it’s the last thing you ever do.

You wouldn’t forgive yourself for anything less.

Perhaps your eyes linger a little too long on Sandra in Chemistry class, but that is no reason for you to start slacking off.


End file.
